


The Kronia Song

by fiorinda_chancellor



Series: Till We Have Cases [2]
Category: Greek and Roman Mythology, Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Historical, Bronze Age, Festival, Friends to Lovers, Friendship/Love, Godlock, Greek Mythology - Freeform, Holiday, Johnlock - Freeform, Kronia, M/M, Mythology Behaving Badly, New Year, Other, Proto-Saturnalia, Seasonal, Till We Have Cases, When Gods Deduce, Winter Solstice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-24
Updated: 2012-12-24
Packaged: 2017-11-22 07:21:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/607272
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fiorinda_chancellor/pseuds/fiorinda_chancellor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A seasonal interlude in the continuing story <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/488558/chapters/852325">Till We Have Cases,</a> a tale of the ancient Greek world's only Consulting God, and of the Healer- and Warrior-Prince who's his blogger, faithful companion, and (more than) colleague. </p><p>Snow's falling on Mount Olympus. It's the Kronia festival, time of communal overeating and overdrinking, of license and upended roles... and in the House of the Two Hundred Twenty-One Bees, everything's unusually crazy. </p><p>See -- the Consulting God actually doing housework in the kitchen!<br/>See -- his trusty Healer-Prince, topless! (By frequent popular request.)<br/>See -- the staff of the House getting seriously out of hand! </p><p>Warnings for evergreens, pagan ritual, Mortals Cooking Brilliantly, Gods wishing they'd never had this theoretically brilliant idea of getting Seriously Seasonal, snogging in front of the fire, Ovid getting rewritten (so what else is new?), and seasonal good cheer (with many wishes for the same for you.)</p><p>This story takes place around ch. 23 of <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/488558/chapters/852325"><i>Till We Have Cases.</i></a></p>
            </blockquote>





	The Kronia Song

(via the Prophecy and General Cultural Content Channel of the West Wind Web, dated (after the fall of great Ilion) the 109th kalend-week of Winter, in the last days of the month Boukatios:)

> _You’d probably be quite surprised, at least as surprised as I first was,_  
>  _To find out that even the Gods who dwell in Olympus’s precincts_  
>  _Do holidays just as we do. Not so much the ones made in their honor—_  
>  _That strikes them as tacky—but others, the great holidays of the year’s-round,_  
>  _The feast days of spring and of leaf-fall, the Long Day of each year’s high summer;_  
>  _And also the Longest of Nights, on which even high Gods keep the Kronia,_  
>  _The same as men do…_  
> 

_“Iaon—!”_

“Oh, what _now?”_

“We need three more amphoriskos of the ‘18. Maybe four!”

“Yes, well, go on, the big jug’s right behind you in the clamp, just pour out into the spare empties in the rack. Don’t look at me, I’ve got my hands full right now! You _did_ say twenty minutes per _mina_?”

“Twenty per _mina_ and twenty minutes over.”

“Holy Gods, if I thought I needed to drop a little weight, there’s one thing I can stop worrying about. The _heat_ down here!”

“You’re worrying about the heat?” A snort from the slender dark form that was wrestling with the big shipping amphora in its tipping clamp. “I’m worrying about the _wine cellar_. How can six invisible women drink like twenty men? They’re not even _mixing_ it up there!”

 _“Six_ women?” Prince Iaon had to chuckle as he stood aside for a moment from the full blast of the big downstairs-kitchen fireplace where the House’s roast meat was done. He’d dumped his typical natural-colored linen canvas tunic — indeed had dumped everything but openwork sandals and a light linen kilt (which fact had produced repeated appreciative hooting from the Thalastrae when he went upstairs with the hors d’oeuvres). Now Iaon grabbed a sponge to mop his face and chest with and a dishtowel to dry, and chucked them both into one of the sinks. Then he went back to turning the crank that turned the roast before the big digamma-shaped basket of charcoal that filled the fireplace. “How have you ever even got a count? I mean, I’ve heard six voices often enough… but sometimes there are more things floating around upstairs than if all of them were carrying two-handed. How many _are_ there really of Thalastrae? What if some of them have taken the night off? Or twinned themselves a few times extra? How would we even tell?”

 _“Hey, we need some service up here!”_ shouted many voices together from upstairs: certainly more than six.

“And how can they be invisible, and drink the wine, and not have it show afterwards? There’s something wrong with the science on that, surely.”

The Consulting God, sweating in the long dark khiton that was his normal daywear, and which he’d sworn he wasn’t about to shift out of for any occasion of Gods or men, was—most unusually for him—not even slightly interested in the science of the situation. He turned to his Prince as he gathered up the armful of filled amphoriskos, and moaned in sheer desperation. “Iaon, I’m not cut out for this. Take pity on me and give me an excuse to drop out of this dreadful exercise!”

“And leave _me_ with all the work? When this was _your_ idea?  _Oh_ no.”

“Prince, in our friendship’s name I’m begging you, just, I don’t know… knock me out! _Hit_ me with something!”

“What?”

“I said _hit me!_ Didn’t you hear me?”

“I often hear you telling me to hit you with something, my God,” Iaon said, grinning and wiping his brow, “but normally that’s just subtext. …Never mind, just specify your weapon of choice. Frying pan? Rolling pin? No, wait, that needs washing. There’s a lovely egg beater over here—”

“I don’t care, just for all Gods’ sake—”

“You’d better specify or it’ll be the espresso machine!”

 _“Hello, we need refills!”_ shouted a voice from upstairs, and another identical one, _“More of the nonresinated!”_ , and a third, again exactly the same, _“Send up the one with no shirt!”_

“Too late,” Iaon said, pushing the God toward the stairs, “they’re howling for blood up there and all mine’s spoken for right now, so get moving. _Oh dear Gods the honeycakes don’t let them be burnt—!”_

The God went staggering up the stairs with his arms full of priceless wine, muttering. Or muttering _some_ things. Some were quite audible. _“Iaon Dasosarcheides, I swear, after we’re rested tomorrow I’m going to take this out of your hide!”_

A chorus of affectionate (but quite wicked) laughter floated down from upstairs. The Prince pulled one baking sheet of honeycakes (mercifully unburnt) out of the oven, loaded another one in, slammed the oven door shut, and went back to the fireplace spit and the roast boar on it, bending to pick up the basting mop from the bucket of melted lard. “Promises, promises,” Iaon murmured, grinning to himself in cheerful anticipation...

> _…And here in the dark-doored House, the one that is ceaselessly guarded_  
>  _By two hundred twenty-one Bees,_ _we follow the Kronia custom_  
>  _that servants are served by their masters, who for these days do their staffs’ housework_  
>  _and wait on the servants. If you’ve heard the Consulting God’s tales, you’ll then guess_  
>  _Quite easily, I think, how he takes such a challenge._ “Cook?? _Not_ my _division!”_  
>  _But for mortal or God it’s complex when the ladies we serve are invisible,_  
>  _and a year’s worth of faithful service bears fruit in three days’ worth of madness,_  
>  _The House’s normal order of life all upended past (at least_ someone’s _) bearing…._

“Iaon. Please, _don’t make me go up there again!”_

“Oh, come on, they weren’t giving you _that_ much trouble.”

“You have no idea. One of them… I can’t _believe_ this…!”

“Don’t tell me. One of them pinched your arse.”

“Oh, my Prince! If only!” A dark shudder inside the tall graceful shadow, which was now leaning against the wall by the sink and the Downstairs Cabinet That Is Cold, as if weak with shock. “‘Pinched!’ It was a full-on grope! _Both hands!”_ A moment’s shocked afterthought. “In fact it might have been _three…”_

Iaon had to laugh: he couldn’t help it. “Stop overreacting. You think I didn’t get the same when I was up there passing around the little feta cheese things? Welcome to the world of the feminine gaze.”

“Iaon. You are a _mortal_. Fated to put up with the most dreadful indignities—”

“Don’t take this someplace you’ll later regret, my God!”

“Let me stay down here and I’ll carve the roast beast. Or whatever it is.”

 _“Boar._ And no you will _not_. Put a knife in your hand and let you near this and you’ll start experimenting on it in some weird way.”

“My Prince, I _never—!”_

“Don’t even _start_ going there! Come on, it’s ready to come off the spit. I’ll do the initial surgery and then we’ll go up with the platter together. They’re all half desperate for protein about now; they’ll fall on the thing and never even notice any other flesh that’s in the room with them.”

“You think so?”

“I know so. Come on.”

“Well, if you’re so sure, leave your tunic off.”

“Oh, now _wait_ just one minute…”

> _…But then isn’t that just tradition? And we keep that in other ways also:_  
>  _the great meal of finely roast meat, all juicy and hot off the turnspit,_  
>  _with lots of hot breads and fine cheeses, with light wines and dark ones;_  
>  _then for afters glazed fruits and roast nutmeats, and hot wine mulled up_  
>  _with honey and spice; and the House’s own honeycakes, warm, for our sweetmeats._  
>  _We sit ‘round the fire, and somebody starts telling old Golden-Age stories,_  
>  _or new ones that quickly get old with telling, till everyone laughs_  
>  _and throws nuts at the teller, or someone starts singing some snow-laden carol._  
>  _These things might happen in any old household. But under this roof_  
>  _As the snow falls, by our fire tales are told that truly will never_  
>  _Be equaled elsewhere. The God takes his ease in his seat by the hearth_  
>  _and his shadows draw in while our thoughts turn their backs on the night past the windows:_  
>  _His voice drops down deep and his words start out soft and bend time backward ‘round us…_

“Tell us a _happy_ story,” said one of the Thalastrae, waving a wine glass gently in the air.

The Prince had to chuckle under his breath at that, for the God’s stories were mostly about great murders and old unsolved mysteries, mighty puzzles without known solutions. For a while the God said nothing, stretched out in his shadow in his chair, the firelight catching goldenly in his eyes. All the rest of the room was starred with little lamps, on every table and shelf, and everything was garlanded with evergreen and ivy. On the floor there was a scatter of cushions (indented by virtue of the numerous invisible women sitting or lying on them). Wine glasses rested on the floor or hung in the air, being drunk from—the wine still vanishing from them without leaving any traces, not even Heaven apparently knowing how.

In his own chair across from the God, Iaon (having been graciously allowed to resume his tunic as a reward for good service) made out what he could of the God’s expression. For a deity who’d been so sorely tried over the last few days—and being forced to do any kind of housework whatsoever was about as trying as anything ever got for the God, short of hitting a dead end in deduction on a case, or being physically assaulted—the Consulting God was in surprisingly mellow mode. His own wine sat on the hearth, catching the light like so much liquid ruby; the God’s hands were pressed together and laid against his lips, the whole effect relaxed, amused. He lifted those hands away from his mouth just long enough to say, _“Happy…”_ in a tone of gentlest scorn.

The Prince, knowing as much of the God’s mind as he did, understood his mistrust of something as potentially ephemeral and untrustworthy as happiness. “…All right, then; ‘hopeful’?” said the Prince.

Their gazes fell together for a few moments, and something in the God’s eyes slowly kindled from something he saw in Iaon’s. “Did I ever tell you,” he said, “about that time in the dead of winter when Hermes dragged me off to Phrygia?”

Iaon’s answer was nearly the same as it was whenever one of the God’s sentences began with “Did I ever tell you”. “If you didn’t, tell us now,” he said, “and if you did, tell us again.” For they were never to be missed, those times when the God dropped out of his more normal staccato delivery to spin a story out in sequence, as at a case’s finish, with a recognizable beginning, middle and end, instead of his normal mad leap straight to the heart of the matter. The Thalastrae knew it too, and from all around the sitting room came little rustling noises as they settled themselves to listen.

“It wasn’t just Argeiphontes who was involved, as it turned out,” the God said after a few moments. “Though he tried to keep it from me… as if that was ever going to work. He was out of his depth, as usual, and I was…” A hand waved, lazy. “Available.”

The Consulting God reached down for his wine, sipped it slowly, the gold of the fire glowing a little more strongly in the silver of his eyes. “Even mortals have got wind of this particular bit of business,” he said, “to judge by the stories. Every now and then, the King of the Gods gets a little antsy and needs to get out of Olympus. Stress relief… Queen Hera getting on his case… Or just memories of when he was still a single god, going about the world and making his presence felt in more active ways than just being the patron of suppliants.”

The Consulting God put the wine aside again, laid his hands together once more. “But this goes back to that, in its way. Every now and then, when Zeus gets restless like this, he sneaks out of Olympus in the dead of night, with just one trusted friend by his side—the most powerful God in company with the past Master of schemes and tricks; and together he and Hermes go out journeying into the mortal world. They both put on the semblances of old, beat-up beggar men, and together for a time they walk the world’s roads, seeking to discover whether mortals can at all behave as mortals should. They look to find out who’s been naughty and who’s been nice; they bring gifts and rewards to the virtuous, and punish the wicked according to their deserts.”

The Prince almost started the move toward where his wood-framed waxen note-tablets normally sat by his chair: but that night they weren’t there—the table bore nothing in this season but ivy garlanding and little lamps full of oil scented with the berries of bay. He smiled, leaned back. “Archetype,” Iaon said. “And this time they go out in the cold night of the year when light, or evidence of it, is needed most…”

“Evidence,” the Consulting God said, and gave a little snort. “That year there’d have been need of it. Hermes still isn’t clear what the problem was with the King of Gods and Men _that_ season in particular: but I deduced it before they even left the Mount.” He gazed into the fire. “The Gods were five years into the war before Troy, at that point, and the passions they’d stirred up in the lives of mortals—at least partly for their own amusement—were beginning to find their way home to Olympus and stain their doings with one another. Sides had been taken. At first it had been a casual thing, a cause for amusement: like mortals at a game, wearing one team’s colors or another and shouting the names of favorite players, and getting into fistfights in the bar afterwards.”

The God smiled with scorn beneath his shadows. “But the Gods aren’t as strong on the sciences as they might be. Otherwise they’d know that where you bend the World, it snaps back: that one can’t create such passions in others, even mortals, without the backwash affecting the place where the manipulation began. The team affiliations started becoming personal. God scorned God in the streets of Olympus: plots were hatched by one faction against another… covert or overt attacks were planned. Zeus the King of Gods and Men saw the unrest spreading among his immortal subjects, and began to fear that he’d unwittingly unleashed, or at least condoned, something that was threatening to get completely out of control.”

The God reached for his wine, drank a bit, studied the color of it in the glass. “Argeiphontes was worried by his old friend’s mood. So he texted me on the sly, from the road. ‘You’re needed,’ he said. ‘Hurry up and meet me out here. And for all Heaven’s sake, _don’t be seen.’_ …It’s rare to hear such a tone from the Investigator outside of casework: so just that once, I hurried.”

Some muffled chuckling came from the Thalastrae at the “just that once”: they’d seen enough evidence otherwise in their time, but none of them were of a mood to take advantage of the Kronia to tell the God so.

“And anyway,” said Iaon, sly and amused, “why _wouldn’t_ you have? It’s not often you get hit with such a challenge. Sneak up on all-seeing Zeus, even _after_ you’d have been upgraded onto his early warning system after stealing his thunderbolt.”

“My clever Prince,” said the God, and smiled inside his shadows. “Could it be you know me too well?”

“A while before that happens,” Iaon said. “But it can’t have been easy.”

The God snorted. “Easier than you think. The Shadowcloak has levels of darkness woven into it that not even my godfather Death’s realms can match. Accessing them requires great power: I don’t use them often. But I used them then. No being in Heaven or on Earth or in the Realms Below had the power to see me when I set out, nor when I arrived. …Though there were some logistical considerations. To make contact with Argeiphontes I had to wait till he went out to take a leak in the snow in private. Nearly gave him a coronary.”

More giggling from all around, and the Prince smiled at the thought of the Investigator’s probable expression, or his (probably very fluent and florid) reactions. “Out in the dark and the cold, in some little spinney of fir-trees a hundred stadioi outside of Gordion, the Investigator told me the tale. Though we all know that in many ways Zeus is incurably lazy, a layabout and a serial delegator to others who do the scutwork, like certain nameless brothers—”

A little giggle went around the room. The Prince just smiled. “There are still some duties that Zeus takes most seriously, and one of them is his oldest: his role as patron of the hospitality which the Gods have ordained must be offered by one mortal to another. As Zeus Xenios he’s the patron of all guests, the God who watches over travelers and wanderers and guards the poor and homeless—those whom, when the world afflicts them with trouble, must be able to call upon their fellow men for aid. So here in Phrygia, which was wealthy and at peace, the King of the Gods and the Trickster of the Gods had been walking together in disguise, knocking at men’s doors to beg for a bite of supper and a blanket by the hearth, as any poor wandering man might rightfully do. But to Zeus’s horror, there was no such guest-gift to be found on any road they walked; not in the busy cities, not in the pretty countryside. From door after door they were turned away empty, with never a crumb for their trouble or so much as a breath’s worth of pity for their seeming distress.  Sometimes it was even done with angry words and blows.”

From around the room came soft sighs and murmurs of disapproval and distress. The God drank, looking into the fire. “Everywhere they went, the two disguised Gods had been refused. It was outrageous, that so wealthy a people should have nothing to spare for a pair of poor travelers. But the Phrygians’ long success and comfort had made them complacent and uncaring. They’d forgot the shifting tides of luck and the sometimes distressing shifts of fate, to which even good mortals can fall prey. They’d convinced themselves that the poor folk of the world had somehow done wrong, or were lazy, or had done something else to deserve the hard times which had befallen them.”

“Idiots,” said one of the Thalastrae. Another positively growled. Others muttered agreement.

“So Zeus thought too,” said the God, “insofar as the King of Gods and Men does anything without first looking for somewhere to delegate it. He grew angrier and angrier as he and Hermes King’s-Messenger wound up again and again camping out in some barn full of manure and farmyard animals, or underneath a tree, while the snow fell all around. And though no cold or hunger could touch their immortal bodies, inside Zeus Cronion his heart was going cold with fear. He knew that as mortals go, so go the Gods: and in the mortals’ cruelty and callousness he saw what fate was coming for the Gods, if hearts did not change.”

The God reached down to his glass again, just held it between his hands for a little. “In the meantime, though, his anger was rising in him, and it was a distraction from matters closer at hand. ‘Men have grown evil,’ he said to Hermes Argeiphontes, “and they deserve life no more. We made them to help one another against the world’s ill occasions, not to grind one another down. The time has come when the Gods must once again do as they did before: destroy all humankind, and start anew.”

There was a bit of a hush in the room at that, and Iaon felt many unseen eyes on him: but he was easy enough about it, being not merely a prince but also (increasingly) a storyteller, and so knowing that the upward swing to come would need this harsh downward arc to throw it into proper relief. One pair of eyes, half-seen at least, was resting on him with a suddenly thoughtful look. Iaon just shook his head a fraction, and smiled a fraction, and said, “Tell on, my God.”

The God nodded once. “Well. When he heard that tone beginning, _that’s_ when Argeiphontes started to worry, and with reason. Such a wholesale destruction was far more likely to make the problem worse among the Gods than it was to make it any better: and Hermes knew it. So as the two of them lay down that night with a day tramping those freezing roads ahead of them, and as Zeus’s temper got blacker and blacker, Argeiphontes took me aside on the quiet and said, ‘Consultant, _do_ something! Don’t care what it is or how you do it, but turn on the bloody deduction engine right this minute and find us someplace in this neighborhood that’s going to treat us as guests _should_ rightfully be treated. And you can’t set it up beforehand, either,’ Hermes said, ‘because as patron of Hospitality he’ll _know,_ and he’ll just get madder still. Just get your clever arse out there, and deduce us the way to someone who'll give Himself reason not to wipe mankind off the face of mother Earth! And make it quick.’”

The God turned his wineglass in his hands. “Well, how could I refuse? So in darkness’s shelter I slipped away, and spoke to the Shadowcloak and explained what was needed. And swiftly it bore me up and down the land and round about it. I looked into a thousand places and found evidence in all of them what they’d found already: bolted doors and locked gates, harsh words and closed hearts. But then… then came the thousand-and-first. Just a plain little place, a thatched cottage, property a bit run down, nothing special. But I saw the signs, especially in the shrubbery—”

A sudden peal of several voices laughing from the Thalastrae, and glasses wiggled in the air to be refilled. “The _shrubbery!”_

“You’ll hear,” said the God, while the Prince got up to go about the glasses hanging in the air and pour more wine—doing it carefully, for some of the invisible hands holding the glasses weren’t as steady as they might have been. “To the eye that knows how to observe instead of merely to see, the signs were as obvious as if they’d been chalked on the door. And by dawn the next morning, I leaned all unseen close to the Herald’s ear. ’I have found him,’ I said, ‘such hospitality as neither mortal or immortal will ever have given him, or ever are like to again—’”

“You and your posh grammar,” Iaon muttered under his breath, smiling half a smile as he topped up his own glass and sat down again.

“Oh come now, my Prince,” said the God, smiling, “at such times, you know how tone matters! Anyway, poor Hermes had his doubts. ‘This had better not be one of your clever stunts,’ he said, ‘because we absolutely need a result here.’”

“’And a result you'll have,’ I said to him. ‘As if I don’t know when the situation’s serious. Just go find out for yourself.’

“So up they got, and out onto the road they went again, and out I went behind them, with Zeus none the wiser. Once again they got turned down at the first few places they came to—all fine broad farmsteads that should have been kind to travelers, but instead turned them away, and one place’s owner actually set the dogs on them. They went away with Zeus’s temper even darker than it had been. Fortunately the place I’d found wasn’t far from there, only a few tens of _stadioi_ away. And truly, it didn’t look like much, so that Argeiphontes would’ve passed it by if I hadn’t reached out from under the Cloak and poked him. But he paused by the little run-down fieldstone wall in front of the place, fronting onto that dirt road with the ruts all frozen in it, and said, ‘Let’s stop here.’

“’Oh, you have _got_ to be kidding,’ Zeus said. Nonetheless, the two of them made their way up through the very short grass in front of the house. It was such a small place: the walls were whitewashed-and-plastered wattle and daub, the roof thatched with anything that came to hand, reeds, straw… Out back of it was a little house with a disinterested goose pecking around in front of it; and there were were recently coppiced stands of birch, and roughly trimmed cypress hedges—”

“A _ha_ ,” said the Prince softly, thinking of all the times he’d made jury-rigged bedding out of evergreen boughs in the past.

The God’s eyes gleamed as he saw Iaon’s thought. “And they knocked at the little low front door, the two mighty Gods in the likeness of mortal beggars: and the door was opened to them.

“There was a small older woman standing there in old patched robes, but clean and tidy; she was silver-haired but still spry. And she looked at them and said, ‘You poor things, you come right in here out of the cold!’ And she turned around and called into the depths of the little house, ‘Husband, come here quickly, we have guests!’ And she pulled them inside. They had to stoop, going in, that door was so low. Then out from the back room came her husband, also white-haired as she was, and a little balding, dressed the way country husbandmen are out East—a worn old broadcloth tunic and breeches rather than any kilt or robe.

“And these two made the two raggedy travelers come in, and first seated them on a bench by the fire, and stirred it up to get them warm. Her husband stepped out for a moment while the lady put some more twigs and brush on the fire to get it going, and hung up a cauldron to heat water so they could wash. Her name, she told them, was Baukis, and her husband’s was Philemon. Naturally they didn’t ask for names in return, which would have been rude before their guests had been fed and made comfortable.

“Zeus asked how the two of them had come to be here. ‘We’ve lived here since we were married, thirty-three years ago now? No, thirty-five. The place isn’t much, but it’s ours, and we’re comfortable — ‘

“’And we don’t need anything fancy,’ said Philemon, coming in with an armful of trimmings from the hedge. These he put down on the couch by the window as a sort of springy cushion, and threw a cloth over. ‘We’ve got what we need—enough to eat and drink, and a nice little patch of ground to farm, and a quiet life. And each other: who needs more?’ And after that everything happened in a hurry, with the two moving around each other in the cottage in that perfect kind of synchrony that says they know from long practice not only where everything is, but where the other is, or will be, even without looking, all the time.” Just for that moment the Prince realized that the God wasn’t looking into the fire, but his gaze had shifted to him: then away again, the look warm, if veiled and private.

Iaon looked over into the fire himself, as the rich dark voice went on. “Shortly the water had boiled and some was poured out for the guests to wash: while Philemon fished a little flitch of smoked bacon out of the chimney, and Baukis shredded up a late cabbage to put in with it to seethe. While that was cooking, they made their two visitors lie down on the couch prepared for them, and brought out a table. The old lady propped up its one uneven leg by putting a bit of broken pot between it and the rammed-earth floor, and when it was leveled out she scrubbed it with a bunch of mint and then spread an old age-faded cloth on it, all darned wherever it had got too threadbare. After that she and Philemon laid out some starters: late storage plums and some radishes with cottage cheese, pickled endive and some roasted eggs: and wine in clay cups. Then after that, when the bacon and cabbage was ready, came more wine, red and yellow both; and finally, in case there should be any spaces unfilled, a big bowl of nuts and dried fruits, and in the middle of it all a big honeycomb, the last of that season from their bees.”

The God smiled to himself. “And so the guests thanked their hosts for dinner and then sat and drank and talked with them a long while, as the light faded outside and the firelight grew brighter: about times past and times present, old things and new things and the ways of the world. But eventually Philemon noticed something, and though he didn’t say anything aloud, Baukis caught his unease and saw what was bothering him. They’d all been drinking the wine together, out of the wooden mixing bowl it was served in, mingled with cool water from their well; but the level of wine in the bowl hadn’t gone down even a _bit._

“That was when they realized what was happening; that they had been entertaining Gods unawares. Philemon and Baukis both raised their hands and begged pardon for the simplicity of their welcome, and looked at each other, and said, almost in the same breath, _‘The goose!’_ And they both ran out to catch the single goose that was their pet and watchdog, thinking they should sacrifice it to the visiting Gods.”

The Consulting God grinned. “Well, then came the comic relief part of the evening, as the oldsters started chasing the goose around and around the house. Hermes said later that he and Zeus were both laughing so hard they were nearly wetting themselves. And the goose, meanwhile—perhaps understandably— wasn’t having any of it. The first chance it got, it ran in the open back door and up into the cottage’s little tiny sitting room and jumped into Zeus’s lap, begging him in Goose to protect it from the crazy people with the axe.”

All the Thalastrae started laughing at the very thought: and Iaon was sitting there chuckling, thinking of the look on Hermes’s rough-hewn face. _“That,_ I deduce, is where the King of the Gods finally _did_ find he needed to change his loinwrap. He and Argeiphontes couldn’t even breathe for laughing. And finally when they managed to get some control over themselves, what do they see but the old couple kneeling down in front of them and looking up at them in absolute terror. Zeus got a grip then, and he said, ‘Good folk, you have nothing to fear from us. You have our favour. It’s your many neighbours, who no longer know the meaning of need or help or compassion, who are about to pay the price of their disrespect to holy Hospitality.’

“But then Zeus got his surprise. ‘King of Gods and Men,’ said Philemon to him, ‘if we’ve pleased you, if as I think it’s your pleasure to somehow to reward us: then of your mercy grant us our countrymen’s lives. Let them live to learn our tale. Perhaps they will do better.’

“The King of the Gods and his Herald looked at each other. ‘Good people, I can read your hearts,’ said Argeiphontes. ‘You too have suffered at your neighbours’ hands. Lived with the casual unconcern of people who didn’t care whether you had fuel enough to burn of a winter, or food enough in a barren spring or a late summer. And still you’d ask us for their lives?’ But Baukis simply looked him in the eye, and said, ‘Great Guide of Gods and Men, if the old stories tell us anything, it’s that Gods are at their best when merciful. I wouldn’t like to think we’d got that lesson wrong.’”

The Prince smiled softly to himself. So did the Consulting God. “And at that point,” he said after a moment, “Zeus Cronion knew he’d been neatly outplayed, and with only the kindest intent. He nodded once, as he does when he will judge without appeal, and promised not to let the Sea in and drown all Phrygia in his wrath. Then the two Gods led the two mortals outside. ‘Turn around,’ said Hermes: and they did, and saw their mean small place turned to a great golden-pillared temple and its precincts, a wonder of the world: a new temple of Zeus Xenios. ‘Keep this house for me,’ said mighty Zeus to them, ‘and make travelers welcome, and tell them your tale. Perhaps, as you say… they will improve.’ …And then he handed them back their goose.”

More laughter, and a chorus of “Awwwwwww!”s.

The God’s voice slowed a bit then, deepened; though Iaon wasn’t sure the Thalastrae would catch the change in it that he had. “Then Argeiphontes said, ‘But this first before we go. High Zeus Kronion’s wish it is that, because you asked first for a gift for others, you should now ask something for yourselves; anything within the power of Heaven to grant or your hearts to encompass.’ And the couple looked at each other, and were silent a moment.

“Argeiphontes told me later that Zeus was a little concerned that they might have asked for immortality. Not that it couldn’t have been managed; but most mortals who’ve had that gift imposed on them have eventually found it an unexpected burden. He hoped it wouldn’t prove so for them should they ask that boon.

“But that wasn’t what they wanted. Baukis simply took Philemon’s hand in hers, and Philemon said, ‘If we could have anything… it would be just this: never let us be parted. Death comes to all mortal beings, of course. But let Lord Hades do us this last grace, and come for us at the same time, so that my hands need never wrap my wife’s graveclothes, nor hers be forced to put the torch to my pyre.’ To this request too Zeus gladly acquiesced. And as he did, he looked a little sideways… to someone related to Death, who would bear his Godfather that message. Someone Zeus really, _really_ should not have been able to see.”

More _Awwww!_ s, a little tinged with wonder here and there, as Iaon caught the glint of slightly annoyed amusement in the Consulting God’s eyes.

“And so it went,” the God said, holding his half-full wineglass up to the light. “Mortal years fled by, as they do, and the couple grew old tending the great temple, with its ever-increasing flock of guardian geese. Their honey was also quite good.” The God had another sip, smiled, put the glass aside. “And one day when the aches and pains of mortal life were starting to become a bit much for them to bear, the old woman and the old man stood together holding hands on the shining steps of their temple, and suddenly felt the change begin to happen. There was just time enough for the two of them to look into one another’s eyes, to say farewell… and yet to smile: for they knew that what was coming for them wasn’t Death, but something slower, stranger… perhaps, for them, better. A few moments later two great strong trees stood there, rooted in the white marble, their trunks all twined about each other — a holly tree with sharp glinting leaves and red berries, and a thick-trunked ivy, glossy and preparing to come to flower and dark fruit as winter shaded into spring. ...And there they stand yet. Pilgrims come from miles around to see them and hang their boughs with garlands of laurel, the wreath of heroes. And everyone in that part of Phrygia honors those two who conquered death, both theirs and others’, with no weapon but what they felt for each other….”

There was a sort of hum of approval from the Thalastrae as the tale ended. The God smiled that superior smile for anyone to believe who saw it.

Iaon smiled back, silent; but he lifted his glass to the God, and let his eyes say what needed saying.

*

It was of course not the end of the evening’s business. More stories passed through the gathering, as did a lot more wine, and the God got yelled at for eating all the candied oranges and not leaving some for _other_ people. But finally came the time when the yawns began to outpace the jokes and the stories, and one by one the Thalastrae faded back to their own quarters, cheerily, a little boozily, ready to start business as usual the next day. At last only the Prince and the God sat across from each other in the firelit, lamplit silence, breathing the scent of warmed evergreens. After a while not even the chairs could hold them: they wound up side by side on the hearthrug, shoulder to shoulder, leaning against one another and gazing into the low-burning flames.

“Tell me your thought,” the God said finally.

The Prince gave him a soft sidewise look. “You can’t deduce it?”

Not even to his long-destined lover did such admissions come easily to the Consulting God. He shook his head once, just slightly, just briefly.

“Two thoughts, actually,” said the Prince.

“The first one?”

Iaon snickered. “You and your supposedly nonexistent heart,” he murmured. “That was a lovely story. And as for why Zeus knew you were there when he shouldn't have been able to see you? Two drachmae gets you five _you were sniffling.”_

The God harrumphed softly. "Allergies," he said, and offered no further comment.

“But the other thing?” Iaon said at last. “I’m thinking that Zeus and Hermes both missed something about Baukis’s and Philemon’s possible fate… stuck on one side of the question as they obviously were. Not their fault, though.”

The God blinked at him, bemused. “’Obviously?’ And that something would be?”

“That it wasn’t an issue whether or not immortality would make love bearable,” said Iaon. “Because it’d actually go the other way around.”

He closed his eyes and leaned slowly over into the warm shadow that veiled his God’s face. On the far side of the veiling, unseen, Iaon found what he knew would be awaiting him: the sweet eager heat of the God’s mouth, banked like fire against the darkness.

“Interesting thesis,” said the Consulting God in that soft dark rumble, the room growing dark (between kisses) as his shadows slid slowly in around them. “By all means, my dear Prince, let’s start experimenting on that right now. And as soon as I’ve got a result… I’ll let you know."

*

> _See the dawn across the snow? | Clap to see the old year go!_  
>  _Old dark dies in this new light: | start the Gods’ new year aright!_
> 
> _Ia Kronia ia!_  
>  _Ia Kronia ia!_
> 
> _Once when Kronos ruled us, then | times were good for gods and men;_  
>  _All were equal, all were glad, | none were weary, none were sad;_  
>  _Heav’n and Earth danced intertwin’d: | each one knew the other’s mind:_  
>  _Mortals and immortals true | swore to see each other through!_
> 
> _Ia Kronia ia!_  
>  _Ia Kronia ia!_
> 
> _Old time’s gone, we mourn its lack: | but we’re the ones to bring it back!_  
>  _Hold the new Year right and then | all may know such joy again!_  
>  _Turn from anger, heal the pain, | show the door to selfish gain,_  
>  _See off jealousy and strife, | seek out justice, guard the life,_  
>  _Clap to see the world start new, | And to that old dream hold us true!_
> 
> _Ia Kronia ia!_  
>  _Ia Kronia ia!_
> 
> Ία κρόνια Ία  
>  Ία κρόνια Ία

**Author's Note:**

> Notes on "The Kronia Song" are [here at the "Lotus Room" blog.](http://fiorinda-chancellor.tumblr.com/post/38794004418/notes-for-the-kronia-song)


End file.
